Justin Rood September 29, 2006, 9:12 PM

As the icky-email scandal broke wide open, Mark Foley quickly resigned his House seat. But he’s left some big questions behind. Foremost among them: It looks like his activities were known by others, including leaders in his party, for months before they became public —so why didn’t they do anything?

The AP brings new details about how senior Republicans received the news months ago that one of their own appeared to be soliciting a minor, and apparently did little to intervene. But even these details raise more questions than they answer:

Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who sponsored the page from his district, told reporters that he learned of the e-mails from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Republican campaign organization [the National Republican Congressional Committee].

Alexander said he did not pursue the matter further because “his parents said they didn’t want me to do anything.”

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the GOP campaign organization, said Reynolds learned from Alexander that the parents did not want to pursue the matter. Forti said, however, that the matter did go before the House Page Board — the three lawmakers and two House officials who oversee the pages.

Why would Alexander go to the head of the NRCC? Did anyone tell House leadership? Clearly, no one reported the exchanges to the Department of Justice — as Foley’s own laws would have required, if circumstances had been slightly different. Did anyone take internal disciplinary action? And, the biggest question of all: if others knew and did nothing — how can they assure parents of current and future pages that nothing like this is going on now?

Update: Josh notes on TPM that a different story quotes Alexander saying he told “House leadership” — a very different thing from the NRCC.